PHILADELPHIA — A real estate investor who has given away much of his fortune donated a kidney to a stranger Tuesday, saying it was "the moral thing to do."
Zell Kravinsky had the surgery at Albert Einstein Medical Center, which selected the woman who received the kidney. The hospital declined to release details about the recipient, but Kravinsky specified that he wanted the kidney to go to someone who was poor and black. Kravinsky is white.
A hospital spokeswoman said Kravinsky and the woman were resting comfortably following surgery.
Of the thousands of kidneys given by living donors each year, few are donated to strangers, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing. Since the group started keeping statistics in 1988, only 133 of the 46,261 kidneys taken from living donors were given to people the donor didn't know.
Kravinsky, 48, began investing in real estate about 12 years ago and said he ended up "with $15 million burning a hole in my pocket. I wanted to give it all away." Last year, he and wife Emily gave $6.2 million to the CDC Foundation, which supports the work of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
He then decided to donate a kidney. He said he was turned down by two other hospitals.
"My wife has threatened to divorce me if I go through with it," he said. "I don't want her to leave me, but I have to do this."